Free Republic

On BOARD S/Y BUSHIDO--Around 20 years or so ago, Udai Hussein, Saddam’s boy, had some of his heavies beat up a man who refused their master’s invitation to join his table in a Geneva nightclub. The Iraqi wanted to meet the man’s beautiful companion, hence the invite. Although arrested, Udai got away with it by claiming diplomatic immunity. The Swiss caved in, as they often do in such cases. As Plato pointed out, money talks. The only good thing anyone can say about Udai is that he died like a man, as did his brother. Last week a scumbag who...

For all of you out there who think G.W. Bush deserves to be impeached--I’m with you, of course--we may now have the “smoking gun” which would force the Democrats in Congress to act, even if they do not want to. This is a matter of principle, not politics. I believe a fair reading of Sidney Blumenthal’s investigative report on Salon.com of last Thursday, September 6th, provides that smoking gun. The title says it all; it is what many of us have suspected for years: “Bush Knew Saddam had No Weapons of Mass Destruction”. The story concerns the Foreign Minister of...

It was only a matter of time, wasn't it? Since George Washington's executive proclamation in 1789 establishing November 26 as the day that we should give thanks to our Lord for all the favors, kind care and protection he had offered our country, and the Long Island supervisor who objected to a local Catholic priest's religious blessing of a Christmas tree. Jon Kaiman, who is Jewish, made his displeasure known in front of a large crowd which had gathered for the annual lighting of the Manhasset township Christmas tree. Kaiman is the town's supervisor and after the Rev. Nick Zientarski...

Perfidious Albion By Taki If you think comedy is dead, take a trip to that filthy, depressing, and lawless place I wrote about last column. Yes, I’m talking once again about Britain, where the famed Scotland Yard has just launched an investigation that could land me in jail for two years. My crime? In a Spectator column last month I wrote that violent criminals in London and other big cities in the north of England were mostly black thugs that belonged to gangs. Here is the Independent newspaper reporting on the crime of the century and with a very straight...

Top Drawer-Le Maitre Taki Hold the Labels, Please To Ground Zero, or next to it, to meet Jorg Haider, the governor of Carinthia and head of the Freedom Party of Austria. There are not many politicians quite like Haider around, certainly not in Europe, where they tend to run to fat, bald, ugly and definitely hypocritical. Haider is trim, athletic, with a full head of hair, suntanned and good-looking, just like the Austrians one sees in ski movies. He also speaks his mind. I particularly liked his aides, young Austrian men with very good manners and none of that "Who...

Oh dear! "Immigrants must learn to be British," screams a headline in London’s Daily Mail. "New immigrants will soon have to pass English exams and formally swear allegiance to the Crown," is the subhed. Substitute the word American for British, and you’ll have the p.c. police and the liberal press hot on your tail. In the land of opportunity, that is. Not that the Brits are about to get away with it. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has described the idea of compulsory English lessons as "clearly divisive and it goes against the fabric of multicultural society." ...

Although he’s hardly my favourite character, I’m seriously worried about Tony Blair. I feel he’s in the middle of a nervous breakdown. As a peacemaker in India, covered by a rug, looking campy and resembling a dipsophobe who has walked into a friendly pub, Blair has to have lost it. No other explanation will do. He’s always been smarmy and bogus, but this time he brought to mind a catamite in satyromaniacal ecstasy. Non-stop photo opportunities have done to Tony what cocaine and smack did to the late Lord Bristol. The man is a human wreck but he doesn’t know ...

"For Some Kuwaitis, the Ardor for America Cools." So ran the headline, in the Times, where else? Then ensued a long and rather boring piece listing the grievances of various Kuwaitis, all of whom condemned America for bombing Muslims. Needless to say, Osama bin Laden is a hero to those interviewed, none of whom were wild-eyed fanatics, but well-to-do middle-class merchants. So who gives a flying f–? is my reaction. If the Times wants to waste good trees printing what some brainwashed towelhead merchant has to say, I guess it’s their business, just as it is my business to ignore ...

A reader writes in last week’s mail that, according to yours truly, "patriotism means defending America when a Republican is in office." He reminds me that I was frothing at the mouth a couple of years ago during the bombing of Serbia. Well, yes, I sure frothed, but then I don’t exactly remember when the Serbs hijacked four airplanes and attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. As far as I’m concerned, Clinton and Albright went to war against a small country because it was convenient. Serbia was not only weak, but also very unpopular with the media elite and ...

Human nature being what it is, it was only a matter of time before thoughts of misfortune turned to thoughts of money. Last week, lobbyists for Larry Silverstein, the developer who holds the lease on the World Trade Center, helped ensure that a bill passed by the House protects him from claims by victims of the attack and their families. Nobody has sued, thousands of bodies are entombed, there are tens of funerals daily, the area is a disaster, and Larry Silverstein is trying to stay rich. The reason his sharks were successfully lobbying the crooks in Congress was that ...

Sudenly, there is an explosion of media about the dark side of liberalism, exposing their down-the-nose, arrogant elitism and worse. The American Conservative magazine today exposes the elitism of liberals: "Babbittry is the idea that the average Joe lives within the passionless routine of marriage, the tyranny of consumerism, and the regimentation of small-town civic life. Babbittry judges Joe to live in a benighted, blinkered spiritual state, a gay-bashing, beer-drinking redneck whose Taliban tendencies want to ban dancing, rock-and-roll, and R-rated movies. People who don’t live in New York, Hollywood, or divide their time between Virginia, Hyannis Port, or Nantucket...

At a sugar magnate’s posh dinner party in New York City last week, the lady on my right had just called Ariel Sharon a war criminal and a terrorist. I looked at her place card: Pamela Gross-Finkelstein. “You’re not German, by any chance?” I asked her. “No, I’m New York Jewish—and not a self-loathing one either,” came the answer. Pamela and I hit it off after that, as I did with the rest of the table—most of them very rich and Jewish—who happened to agree. Now I don’t usually report on private dinner conversations, but this was a breakthrough. It’s...

So there’s always a first time. If John Kerry wins in November, he will be the premiere president of this great country of ours to be also a gigolo. The dictionary defines “gigolo” as a man supported by a woman in return for his sexual attentions and companionship. It might sound rough for John Kerry, but it’s right to the point. Let’s face it. The 44th president (maybe) is as close to a gigolo as I can think of, and I have known many. In fact, my best friend and best man for my first marriage to the beautiful French...

Drivel and bilge Taki (Excerpt) Not that I’m exactly a homebody, but never before have I taken lunches by myself next to American ladies who lunch. And never before have I heard such drivel, such bilge masquerading as talk. American women have never been my favourites, but now it’s getting ridiculous. In civilised societies such as ancient Athens and Imperial Japan, women tried to make life a little more pleasant and easier for the breadwinners; only in the United States does the male spend his time pampering and, worse, listening to women. I suppose it all went wrong in 1920,...

Did he or didn’t he? Get Kerry-ed away and have it off with an intern. It’s either one or the other, and I guess we have to take Alexandra Polier at her word and believe he didn’t. Kerry is one bad dude, and I don’t mean just because he didn’t do it. I mean his lifelong habit of getting a rich woman to pick up the tab. I know I’m being old-fashioned and all that, but I was taught that one marries for love, not money. Mind you, he’s not unique. In the circles I used to run around in,...

Nobility in Our Time By Taki An Austrian nobleman and an American aristocrat died on the same day recently, and I feel this is not the end of a chapter but the end of a book. My father-in-law, his Serene Highness Prince Peter Schoenburg-Hartenstein was 88. He was a naturalized American citizen, having left Austria in 1937, just before the Anschluss. He was born in the Rome embassy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, where his father was ambassador to the Holy See. His mother, Princess Sophia Oettingen-Wallerstein, traced her noble lineage to before Charlemagne, as did the Schoenburgs. In the Congress...

A racist rant too far? Police investigate Taki the playboy pundit By Sholto Byrnes 01 February 2003 Taki Theodoracopoulos once served four months in Pentonville Prison for possession of cocaine. Now the prospect of a two-year stretch in jail looms for the Greek playboy and columnist. Taki and The Spectator, for which he writes the "High Life" column, are being investigated by Scotland Yard over an article he wrote in the magazine's 11 January edition. The investigation was triggered by a complaint from Peter Herbert, a lawyer and member of the Metropolitan Police Authority. The Yard's Diversity Directorate will assess...

Useful IdiotsBy Robert LockeFrontPageMagazine.com | October 15, 2002 The conservative movement is threatened by two things. First, the Left. Second, members of our own movement who would pervert it down one ideological rat-hole or another. I am willing to support paleoconservatives when I think their arguments have merit. As I wrote in my review of Pat Buchanan’s book The Death of the West, the paleocon position on immigration, “Stop!” is correct. I credit paleocons in general, and Mr. Buchanan in particular, with understanding that politics in our time is a game played for civilizational stakes. But then we come to...

Gstaad Bismarck famously said that the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Nor is Iraq. We had Saddam cold back in 1991 but stopped the war a day too early. With good reason. The ghastly Saudis, the treacherous Turks and the shitty Iranians were not keen on a separate Kurdistan, ergo Saddam was given a pass by Bush senior. Now we’re back to square one — this time, however, with Sharon calling the tune. Talk about massive overload. Uncle Sam seems to be everywhere, from Colombia to the Philippines, the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India,...

Teach the Bard; Sue the SaudisI remember it as if it were yesterday. I was about to be taken into Athens to see the latest American import, Beau Geste starring Gary Cooper, a pseudo-historical thriller about three brothers who run away and sign up with the Foreign Legion...you can guess the rest. Then my great-uncle arrived, remonstrated with the nanny for polluting my young mind with rubbish, canceled the visit and set me down for a lecture on...Shakespeare. Now, if anyone was brought up to hate the Bard it would have to be me. After all, Hamlet, the prince of...

New York My last week in the Bagel and the only subject of conversation is the documentary about the Hamptons that was shown on prime-time TV. Now I assume that everyone, even a low-lifer like Jack Straw, knows where the Hamptons are and what they represent, a sort of caviar dreams-sur-mer, a place that poor old Jay Gatsby would surely have picked had he been born towards the end of the century. I used to have a large house in Southampton, but in a moment of folly I sold it and bought a big plot of land in Connecticut where...

A FEW OBSERVATIONS before I leave the Big Bagel for the elected dictatorship of Tony Blair's Britain, and the unelected tryanny of the European Union farther south. Americans are basically spoiled. William Bennett says, "The nation we live today is more violent and vulgar, coarse and cynical, rude and remorseless, deviant and depressed, than the one we once inhabited," and I agree with him, but boy, compared to the rest of the world, you never had it so good. Over here, at least one has a chance to vote for those he or she thinks will do a better job...

It Could Have Been the German Century by Francis Fukuyama My nominee for man of the century is considerably less well known than Time's choice, Albert Einstein, even though his actions arguably left a much greater imprint on the century. He is Alexander von Kluck, the hapless general commanding the German First Army as it swung around the French right while dashing toward Paris in September 1914. The French line miraculously held, and von Kluck lost the first battle of the Marne. The German drive was stalemated, and the two sides then settled down for four horrible years of trench...